Candidate for
Board Member; New Haven Unified School District

Lance Nishihira was born in Redwood City CA in November of 1973. At the age of 4, his family set down roots on Olive Street in Newark next to its first mayor, George Silliman.

Lance's father was born a pig farmer from one of the most impoverished areas in Hilo, Hawaii, and through determination and sacrifice was able to establish himself in the Bay Area as an electrical engineer. From him, Lance learned much about hard work, determination, and character. Lance's mother was raised in Redwood City and had a great love of education and public speaking. From her, he learned compassion, leadership and service.

At Newark Memorial High School, Lance was involved in student government, wrestled, played football, and was the captain of the drumline. Centering his life on the principle of service, Lance entered the United States Marine Corps with aspirations of becoming an officer and pursuing a law degree. A series of debilitating injuries led him to cut his military career short.

Lance first attended San Francisco State, but after meeting his future wife, Tina, transferred to California State University, where he received his Bachelor of Arts in Mass Communication with a minor in Sociology. Directly out of college, he became a typographer with Bay Area Typographical Union Local 21, working at The Daily Californian in Berkeley. This was 1997, and the world wide web was just beginning to lay down its foundation.

Lance took the opportunity to learn about the new medium, and companies like Netscape, AOL, Yahoo!, eBay and Comcast were his proving grounds. In 1998, he and Tina were married and moved to Union City. He's been blessed with three wonderful girls that are all in NHUSD schools. In keeping with his commitment to service, he has continually served on school site councils beginning in 2006 at three different school sites, and has served as Chair on most of those councils.

Lance spends much of his spare time lately working on Union City's Economic Development Advisory Team and its General Plan Advisory Committee and is the team manager for his daughter's UC Premier soccer team, Arsenal. He is currently the Head of User Experience at a payments startup in Palo Alto.